In commercial photoprocessing centers, photographic developing machines print customers' orders on long webs of photographic paper. Several of these webs are then spliced together to form a large print roll that is taken to a print cutter where the roll is cut into individual photographs and sorted into envelopes for a customer. Often, along the length of the photographic web that comprises the print roll there exist areas of wastepaper, either where the roll was spliced or in the middle of an order due to a printing error. Wastepaper is defined as any length of paper within a print roll that does not contain print exposures belonging to a customer's order.
In commercial photoprocessing operations, print cutters are capable of cutting and sorting between 20,000 and 30,000 prints per hour. Prior to the present invention, when the operator of a print cutter encountered an area of wastepaper, it was necessary to manually remove it before automatic print cutting could begin again. This manual procedure takes time and even a delay of 30 seconds can significantly impact the number of prints the print cutter can process per hour.
In commercial print cutters such as that disclosed in commonly assigned U.S. Pat. No. 4,943,270, incorporated herein by reference cut marks are placed on the edge of the web, between the individual photographs, to indicate to the print cutter where one photograph ends and the next photograph begins. Generally, such cut marks comprise a small hole, which is sensed by a cut-mark sensor (for example, a phototransistor) that recognizes the presence of a cut mark and signals a cutting knife on the print cutter to cut the web. Also, commercial print cutters usually include a sorter mechanism that stacks the cut photographs before they are placed in an envelope for the customer. Typically, the sorter mechanism includes a drive belt that transports the cut photograph from the cutting knife through the sorter mechanism. Because there is often a gap between the cutting knife and the drive belt, if a piece of wastepaper is cut from the web having a length that is smaller than the length of the gap, it is possible that the piece of wastepaper will jam the cutting machine. Should this occur, the efficiency of the print cutter will obviously be reduced due to the time it takes to unjam the machine. Therefore, it is desirable to have a method for removing wastepaper from a continuous web of photographic paper automatically that will not significantly impact upon print cutter efficiency by ensuring that the length of any waste paper cut from the web will not jam the machine.